


who makes creatures different

by muzaplacha



Series: tell me about me [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Female Friendship, Female-Centric, Gen, Sibling Love, Unhealthy Relationships, You can love someone very much and still be a bad person, probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 12:11:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15267243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/muzaplacha/pseuds/muzaplacha
Summary: What Petunia could have told about Lily had she not committed to telling only lies on the subject of her Dead Perfect SisterPOV Petunia.





	who makes creatures different

**Author's Note:**

> i am releasing this without proof reading because it's late and i'm in pain and desperate to be done.  
> sorry 'bout that.

 

Lily Evans was an odd child, intense, with an edge. She had her father’s eyes and fiery red hair that no one on either side of the family ever had. Her father had gone one day to the clinic, discreetly, and done a parenting test. It came back positive, but he could never shake the feeling that something was off about his little girl. Later, when they would learn of the exciting new world of magic, he would sometimes find himself thinking about _changelings_.

 

Petunia was the first to notice the odd glances, the whispering conversations, the pointed fingers of other kids, cruel voices screaming “freak” as they passed by. So she led her little sister into her sacred pillow fort and said: “You are not acting like other kids. The adults are afraid of you. They are going to take you away from me. You have to be _normal_.”

 

Incidentally, this sprouted a lifelong obsession born out of fear and love, but that’s a whole other story.

 

Little Lily watched her wonderful sister, watched and emulated and learned, until within a span of a year people seemed to have forgotten the unnerving little faery-child with the bright green eyes and silent smile, and fawned over the polite and cheerful Evans angel.

 

She went on to live a short, exhausting life full of deceit. She took some lives and gave one. She died a martyr, with only an estranged muggle sister to remember her as she was and who, in turn, would never tell anyone a word of truth about her ever again. So it goes.

  
-

 

Memory is an odd thing. Our mind distorts and twists whatever image we call up if we do it long enough until, like a game of Telephone, the end result has little to do with what you started with. If you try to keep something buried - it only pops up to wake you in the middle of the night. If you think of something seldomly it turns foggy and uncertain with doubt.

 

Petunia Dursley tried very hard not to think of her sister since long before she died. She was just getting good at it, too, but then- well,

 

When you try very hard, as she no doubt did, to _not tell_ your nephew about his dead mother, you accidentally end up constructing memories as narratives, reliving them as stories; folding the laundry while not-telling him, in grown-up words for feelings she was too small for at the time, how it felt when _she_ left. Out of her own accord. Again and again and again.

 

But then of course he didn’t listen, of course, as it was not said aloud, and the story got trapped and _retold_ through dinner, nappies, washing for bed and the next hundred mornings.

Pain grew alongside resentment alongside a clueless, guileless boy.

 

-

 

There was a mirror above the bathroom sink in an elaborate silver frame; when you turned the hot water on for the shower it eventually turned into droplets and collected in the creases of the metal flowers and swirls, slowly rolling down them to drop on the white sink. If someone forgot to wipe them after their showers, after a few days, they became circles of light crust. Lily would put a finger to the faucet to wet it and trace the remains if she saw them while Petunia brushed her red hair.

When the brushing was done for both teeth and hair, and just before going to sleep, Petunia- still on her wooden stool and a whole head above her sister would make facial expressions for Lily to name. As Lily got better so did Tuney. The faces got subtler, the situations more peculiar.

 

“You’ve seen a bug you don’t like, but you can’t look away. So maybe you.. Do.. like it?”, Petunia laughs at the reflected expression and says, “I think it shimmers interestingly but it’s also gross.”

“So do you want to keeps looking at it or do you want to squish it?”, Tuney’s face is frozen, still, in that particular imaginary situation and she twists her whole head from side to side while looking in the mirror, trying to see it all, “I don’t know yet.”

“Then how am _I_ supposed to know? What am _I_ supposed to do?”, Which is always the trickiest part of these lessons. Petunia releases her face and smoothes her palms over silky red hair, “Well if you haven’t seen the bug, that is if you don’t know why I’m making the face, you should ask me what’s wrong. Then when I answer, you can ask me if I want to keep looking at it - because remember, you should choose an option without violence first. It’s not always right, but it’s safest- so then I can tell you that I don’t know, like I did now, and it’s safe to ignore me.”

Lily takes her time to think about the _if_ s and _then_ s, “What if you tell me that you want to smash it?”

“You should say ‘ew’ and show disgust, and suggest to either leave it alone or find a boy to do it.”

“I don’t mind doing it.”

“I know. But you shouldn’t. It will get you A Look.”

“Right. And Looks are not safe.”

“They’re not, Lils. Come on, it’s time for bed now.”

 

-

 

Lily was steadily approaching nine-and-a-half, if Petunia recalls correctly, and still not very good with other girls despite being good and polite and exceptionally friendly; the strain of it leaving her motionless in her sister’s arms for an hour each night. Nobody said anything, of course. Nobody said anything bad about Lily since Petunia took the situation in hand; and the bond between the sisters was obvious, and right, and seemingly enough for the meddling adults around them.

 

One day Lily flew off the swing because, she said, she thought it would be a good jump-start; and it was, and she did - fly, that is - float in the air like a fairy, red hair flowing around her and creating tangles she will brush away before bed with tears in her eyes. So then when she flew and a boy came tumbling out of the foliage to tell her she was a Witch, she was magic, proper magic like him, Petunia thought “She's going to need a friend in there”. In bed, Lily exhausted in the bracket of Petunia’s wily body, she encouraged her sister to befriend the boy.

 

“He was watching us from the bushes, Tuney! Like a creep! I don’t want to be his friend. I don’t want to be anyone’s friend. I have you. Besides, you didn’t look like you liked him.”

“You’re right. I don’t.” - soon Lily will be too old to come to her sister for confirmations of emotional observations. Petunia feels it in her bones. But while she isn’t - too old, and while she does - ask, Petunia does her very best to give her feedback. To give her tools. The help she needs to blend in and be normal. The Snape boy, filthy and more stick-like that herself told the girls about a school of magic where Wizarding children go at age eleven. Petunia holds her little sister closer and tries to tell herself this won’t be the end, that they won’t take her away despite everything she’d done to keep her. She was wrong, of course.

 

-

 

Severus Snape was not a happy boy by any stretch of the imagination but his face lit up when he’d come to their house to fetch Lily, and in time she learned to do the same. Petunia told her she didn’t have to smile so wide; a small smile will suffice. It was too late with this one, but Lily dutifully nodded and said, “Next time, then.”

 

-

 

“I don’t have to like him. He’s _your_ friend. In fact I think you should know that most people are not going to like him,” Petunia didn’t stop for any dramatic effect some kids liked so much, it just didn’t work with her sister, “He’s too sullen and angry. I suppose if one put in an effort to get to know him properly, one might find some qualities to like, but it’s not very likely that anyone is going to try. Remember that in that new school of yours.”

Lily looked at her and suddenly smiled - small and mischievous as she only did between them, “That’s jealousy.”

Petunia sighed, “It is.”

“It’s OK, I’m not angry. And you shouldn’t be jealous - you’re the only one I care about. You’re the only one I’ll ever care about. No boy is going to change that and no Wizard.”

 

Petunia thinks she might have invented that last line but she can’t be sure.

 

-

 

Sometimes she pitied Snape, who so clearly longed for a friend, who so openly craved Lily’s company. She never did truly care for him. She wasn’t malicious - Petunia taught her better than that - but she didn’t care unless he talked about magic. She’d get this look on her face, an indulgent smile, like she was only half with him at all times or like she might up and walk away at any second. Petunia doesn’t know if he noticed and chose to ignore this, this and all the ways her little sister practiced her social masks on him, or if he truly didn’t see. She supposes it didn’t really matter at the end as he still got what he needed - her friendship, such as it was. The pleasure of her company. The things that belonged to Petunia.

 

-

 

When the damned letter came Petunia had to try just one last time - could not live with herself unless she’d exhausted all possibilities. The rejection from the headmaster was polite and kind. She still hated him with all her heart, him and magic. As she would anything that took away pieces of Lily.

 

-

 

Schools seems now like a blur, a two-second event, more than any other era in her life. She can't really recall the names of her friends or their faces; what she'd learned, how she felt, what she dreamed of. Most of the letters she got during those years she burned in a fit of depression and pain a few days after _Harry_. Some she remembers regardless, but only some. There are more blanks where her little sister used to be than there is substance. She has so little.

 

She remembers this - long letters ranging from bewildered to ranting in regard to her new classmates. Recurring names; Severus, Alice, Naita, then Potter and the rest of his gang. How for the first time in her life she discovered that she doesn’t want to be meek and soft, but wants to fight back. How she learned to get revenge on behalf of her friend, to talk about boys like it meant something, to punch without question when someone said “Mudblood”, to be a prodigy in Charms, to stand her ground and belong.

 

Petunia still remembers the definition of Charms: ‘ _a charm adds certain properties to an object or creature_ ’. How fitting.

 

-

 

She met Vernon Dursley and something inside her said, “Yes. Alright.”

              And again when he asked for a date.

                       And again when he proposed.

                                  And got in the habit of saying it for many years to come.

 

-

 

There are elements to this story she doesn’t want to think about so she doesn’t _not-tell_ them to her nephew. The double date with James, the fiasco of her wedding, the colour Vernon’s humiliated face had turned; not something the boy is likely going to want to hear, nor she repeat. The horrible way in which magic kept invading and ruining her life and had ruined his own. If she’s good enough - if she’s better than she was with Lily then he will never get to know.

 

-

 

On one horrifyingly normal, chilly morning, Petunia Dursley opens her front door to a child in a basket, like Moses, and an envelope with a familiar handwriting. She sees her father’s eyes open on a tiny face and chokes. Nobody told her- god, the bastards- this child wouldn’t be here if- and nobody told her. The pain drops her to her knees and she crawls back inside while clutching he horrible weight of the last thing her sister ever touched and kissed and loved. The front door slams shut seemingly by itself and Petunia howls in the safety of her den - a frightening, throat-burning sound and there is water falling from her eyes onto the child’s forehead and Dudley, her own flesh, echoes his mother’s distress from the nursery. She wants to bash the baby’s little head on the floor. She wants to vomit out all of her insides and not feel anything at all. She wants to die and be with Lily.

 

Had she fished him out of the river herself, perhaps she would have loved him. Ten years of privilege and care to soften the burden of hope. But he was left to her as a messenger of death, an omen, a burden. Something to be hidden in the dark. So she did.

 

-

 

_Letters on Parchment, lying in a sealed cardboard box under a bed frame in the master bedroom of Private Drive number 4;

 

 

 

> {I’m done with Severus; I thought you should know. I hope this, at least, will make you happy. He’d called me a ‘Mudblood’, you know how I hate that word. I was trying to stop James and his gang from tormenting him again- isn’t this what normal people do, try to help their friends? Well I tried and he called me a Mudblood. I have no patience for this anymore. I have no use of him anymore. Honestly, I think I hung on to him for too long, I don’t know if it was for the sake of appearances, or just because I was used to his shadow beside mine. Anyway. I thought you’d like to know.}

 

> {I’ve said yes to Potter. Well, better start calling him James now, I suppose. I just, Tuney, people were talking, you know how it is with me. I don’t want to stand out. It’s not normal, right, to reject someone for so long, and without even the excuse of dating someone else? So here. I said yes, and now I’m dating Potter. Which basically means I’m dating Remus, Sirius and Peter, as well. It’s fine, it’s fine. I wish I could throw them into the Lake and have _you_ here instead. My year-mates have been talking about nothing but this all week. It’s fine.}

 

 

> {Merlin have mercy, the way James looks at me sometimes, Tunes. He’s going to want to marry me. I don’t know if I can fake it for that long.}

 

> {I’m pregnant. This is the price one has to pay. I keep remembering our neighbor from down the street smiling at me every day, I don’t think I told you, Mrs. Redmond. I would smile back while she patted my cheek and think how a few months before that you had to drag me away from her grip because she started lecturing me while you were tying your shoes behind us. I was tiny and she was.. You had taught me my masks and I paid the price and I keep paying it. James is ecstatic.}

 

 

> {There is a terrorist and he wants to destroy me and everyone like me. Muggle-burns. Mudbloods. His name is Voldemort and I’m not fucking scared of him or his attack dogs. I am four months in. I have killed ten people that I know of. I can’t visit you while this war is still on. Do you ever look at your belly and think your child might turn out to be like me?}

 

> {I didn’t mean Magic.}

 

> {Voldemort wants to kill my baby, so Dumbledore has put us into hiding. You won’t be able to reach me anymore. I am enormous and scared shitless; you probably know.}

 

_Letters on Parchment, unopened, intercepted by James and hidden in the remains of the Potter house in Godric’s Hollow;

 

 

 

> {I never thought someone would matter to me as much as you do, Petunia, but there is a warm disgusting tiny thing of flesh in my arms and it’s mine, like you are mine, and I would lay the corpses of everyone I know at its feet.}

 

> {Petunia? I’m scared.}

 

> {Tuney.}


End file.
